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It is difficult to maintain a positive attitude during a job search campain where I’ve sent out at least 50 resumes to places ranging from Best Buy’s Geek Squad to Lucasfilm, from YouTube to Central Computers (local computer repair/support/sales store started in the mid 80s).  I mean, big places and little places, and the two calls I’ve had so far are one “Overqualified” and one “position has been cut”.

But, for the most part, I’ve been succeeding at keeping a positive and hopeful attitude.  Sometimes my grip on my attitude slips, and those are times when it is really handy to have my mom around to help re-align my thoughtflow.

I mean, really, if I were in a negative mindset, would I even consider applying at Lucasfilm?

Other than jobhunting, I haven’t put a great deal of effort toward any of my other projects.  I read a chapter of my Java book as a refresher, thinking maybe I could pull in some quick cash through contract programming.  I have yet to put the car’s engine back together, but the spark plug hole is fixed and I have the gaskets.  The plan is, while I’ve got the engine this far apart, and the gasket kit was for the whole engine, I might as well take off the other head and clean it, too.

Talked with a guy yesterday who’s friend drives a 1972 VW Beetle, gets 42mpg.  Properly tuned and running smooth, that’s about what I can expect from my Ghia.  That’s pretty exciting.

New pergola is framed, some plumbing projects have been completed, more to be done for mom’s surgery recovery time.

…and I’m tired and need sleep.

*HUGS*

Sorry so long between updates, been a busy time with the jobhunting and the coast bouncing.

My wife had a hysterectomy this past Wednesday, so I spent Saturday through Saturday in Florida (or aboard a plane) and helped with the toughest first days of her post-op recovery.  The surgeon was able to keep the procedure laproscopic, which is much better than the big-slice alternative, and the recovery expectations are positive and likely to be on the shorter side of the often quoted “4 to 6 weeks”.

I started a couple projects with the kids, but didn’t have the time or energy to finish them.  I’m kinda sad about that, and I really miss them.  I can’t wait until I get everything together and have us all in a nice house in this wonderful area.  For that I need income.

Today we went sailing with Lew Rubens and Sabrina Fox.  Excellently awesome people, had lots of fun, networked, and might (maybe) end up having a good amount of Internet/Webpage work lined up through them.  I’m hopeful, but as may be obvious by the way I phrased that, I’m sadly resigned to the likelihood that I misread things or I’m putting too much stock in the situation and will, again, fail.

…

I’m not depressed, I’m excitedly looking for new opportunities and new friends.  It’s just that, what past experience tells me, is that pessimism is realism more often than optimists want to admit.  What feels strange about that realization is that it doesn’t fill me with dread or sorrow, because I’m an optimist betting that I’ll beat the odds through sheer tenacity.

But each time I come to an obstacle, I don’t expect to succeed, I expect to fail, at least once, likely more, and the hope is that I’ll figure it out and either get through it or around it before, like a fly at the window, I bash my own head in.

Flies are optimists, too.

I will succeed sooner or later.  My hope is sooner.

*HUGS*

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Well, I’m making headway in getting resumes out.  I’m starting to develop a flow: find job, read about job, find company, read about company, customize resume, send, record.  That last step means put the company contact info and notes into a spreadsheet, which I’ve forgotten to do more than once.  I should fix that in the morning by pulling up sent e-mails.

I figure that putting my resume up here can’t hurt, so if you want to take a look, here it is.

The strange thing about jobhunting out here are the names that are possibilities to send resumes to, like Yahoo and Google and eBay.

Other news, I’ve got the engine out of the Ghia again, so that I can pull off the left head to tap out the sparkplug hole and put in the new sparkplug with the new threads.  Then I get to debug the fuel system, but that might be as simple as “put gas in it, stupid.”  Won’t bother trying to find out until I’ve got the engine back in.

No, the fuel guage doesn’t work.

Trivia: The original Kharmann Ghias sold did not have a fuel guage, they had a reserve tank.  When the engine died because the main tank ran out, you’d just flip a switch to the reserve tank and start it back up.  Hilariously non-user-friendly for today’s market, but in the mid 50s, I guess it wasn’t a big deal.

But mine has a fuel guage, it just doesn’t do anything.  I’ll figure that out later.

My kids want to build a really nice “playhouse”.  They’ve worked together to identify the problems, I helped them with some basic information and direction, like using graph paper for technical drawings, using 1 square equals 1 foot scale, etc.  And I told them that even though we all know that we can’t start this project, we CAN plan, we can design, and we can put it on paper for when we have the ability to actually DO it.  I encouraged them to think, design, and draw and re-draw their ideas until someone else could look at the paper and know exactly what they meant.

Worst case, it ends up being a really really nice shed/workshop for someone down the line.

I miss my kids.

I miss my spice.

I miss paychecks (and I’ve only missed one at this point).

All that will be solved, though.  Soon I’ll spend a week with them all, and then soon after that we’ll be happily househunting in the bay area without a care in the world.

*HUGS*

Has a nice ring to it, “Contract Complete”.  “They are going in a different direction” doesn’t sound so bad, either.

The underlying, “You don’t have a job anymore” … that’s not so nice.

I used to get mad, or depressed, or beligerent, or begin to question the value and morals held by those who decided that their money is worth more than my livelihood.  Now I only have one question.

What next?

Been pretty busy, and I’ve missed a few moments that maybe should have been captured on the blog, but this one will have to be a little short.

I went and saw Kina Grannis today!  She’s such a cool person, extremely talented singer/songwriter, very likely to end up a national name, and I just hung out with her at Starbucks.  Got video and pictures to prove it, too!

Was a good time.

Tonight is a very different set of people with a very different idea of fun.  More on that probably tomorrow.

*HUGS*

“I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” - Robert McCloskey

G at work introduced me to his friend from Argentina with the same first name.  We had Argentinian Barbecue Friday night and talked about the things that could and should be done to improve cars, made a list and discussed details about how to implement those things on our own cars.  Fun geek-level construction talk late into the night, with lots of yummy barbecued meat.

Saturday I put engine is back in the car, but it won’t start because I think I blew the ignition coil, or maybe just the fuse for the ignition, but at 3:30am Saturday night (aka Sunday morning) I was done searching.  At least these are components that I had fairly short-term plans on replacing anyway.

Got up at 9-something Sunday morning after getting to bed a little after 4am, and went to the Ren Faire.  Lots of fun, lots of people watching, and I had mead.  It didn’t give me my standard buzzed-equals-headache alcohol reaction, I just got the buzzed part, which was a lot of fun.  Should have taken my camera, should have taken pictures, but I really wasn’t awake enough to think about that until after lunch when I was already at the Faire.

Watched a pewtersmith make little pendants and pins, talked to him about metal casting (because I’d like to cast aluminum) and he gave me a lot of great tips and tricks.  He explained that pewter is a tin alloy, and good pewter is between 92% and 98% tin, and modern pewter contains no lead (unless it is imported from China).  He also explained that even though most home aluminum casting is done in a casting medium made from sand and oil, aluminum is hot enough to ignite the oil, causing pollution and breakdown, so most people that do a lot of aluminum casting have switched to “green sand” which is a water-based casting sand.

I bought a “Got Mead?” pin, and didn’t have to tell the wenches behind the bar what I wanted anymore.

Progress on the car project.  Here’s the car and the workshop and the progress, all in one picture:

Yup, that’s the engine on the floor, tools and parts everywhere, car on jack stands.  I took the engine out all by myself!  I didn’t even break any skin!!!  The space you see is what happened last weekend, with the lights and the painted walls and the floor (it WAS a dirt floor!).  It’s amazing what image and comfort changes you can make with a bit of wood and paint.

I’m still about 6 nuts away from securing the transmission on it’s new bushings (it’s not on the floor).  Then, I get to figure out how to lift the engine high enough to get the jack under it to lift it into place to be bolted back in (another 4 nuts, then the hoses, tubes, and wires).  I might be able to do a little here and a little there over the course of the week and be driving her this coming weekend!  Yeah, I was hoping to be done this weekend, but being the first time I’ve dropped an engine by myself I think I’ve done pretty well time-wise.

I wonder if my hands will ever come clean…

Some of the pause is that I want to clean the engine before I put it back in.  Some is that I want to scrub off  the dirt from the undercarriage and apply a “cold galvanizer” that protects from rust for a couple years.  The stuff is 95% zinc with some other chemicals to help it make the same bond as the standard hot-dip galvanization process, but without the heat.

Catch is: the only medical allergy I know of for certain I have is zinc-based topical creams, you know, like most anti-itch creams and many topical anti-bacterial things like you put under a bandage.  Yeah, I get little blisters and itch like crazy, which is pretty ironic for an anti-itch product.  So… spray-painting the underside of my car with the one thing I’m allergic to.

I bought a painter’s disposable overall thing, I’ve got a respirator to borrow (not just a dust mask, a professional rig with dual filters), and I’ll be getting a set of safty glasses/goggles and maybe some extra skin-coverings for that task.  Some of which will be re-usable when I’m sanding and priming later during the bodywork phase of the project.  I don’t think I’ll be doing the final paint, I’ll let some shop pros handle that.

Anyway, I’m sore from the contortions I’ve gone through reaching up and around and between and over, turning nuts and bolts from odd angles, flipping over a wrench a few dozen times because I could only get 15 degrees of turn.  The hot-tub calls to me louder tonight than it has in weeks.

Pleasant dreams!

*HUGS*

—- edit —-

ROFL!

(this is a cross-post of a MySpace blog I did quite a while ago, but it was one of those rare extremely eloquent moments that I had, and the concept has been coming up lately when attempting to explain to people my philosophy, and maybe as a help for them.)

MySpace Blog: Thursday, March 15, 2007

Life in Full Color Current mood: indescribable I’ve been thinking lately about life, love, right, wrong, and definitions. It occurs to me that most people live in black and white. The whole Christian faith is black and white, simply right or sin. No grey, no color, no shades. Why? Why do we obsess about things being so binary? Either love with everything you have or not at all, either gay or straight, either married or available. “Is it always OR, is it never AND?” - the baker’s wife - Into the Woods I want to live in full color, experience life in full splendor. Yes, this decision carries with it risks. The confusion that currently plagues me with definitions, the knowledge that my heart will likely be injured, the possibility that everything could go completely wrong. But all that could happen anyway, and without ever really seeing life, missing so many beautiful shades of love. I’m going to live with my heart and my eyes open, I will love deep, and I will live through heartbreak, and I refuse to let the scars harden my heart. I will cry, I will laugh, I will not miss the hues of what life brings, they will all enrich me.

… with the garage.

Of course, it is 100 times better than my original plan, and paint sprayers conspired to prevent us from completing things, but now there is a very well lit, painted, and mostly spider-free space with good wiring and a solid floor.  So I have no excuse next weekend.  I have all the parts and all the tools and instructions and latent talent.

My mom’s fiancé (I’ll call him ‘S’) has been invaluable in this endeavor thus far.  Quite the enabler for my project habit.  He enabled me to buy the car, helped bring it back to the house, poured knowledge and suggestions my way, and poured a good bit of labor into my projects as well.  Plus he has given me tips and tricks and tools he’s decided to upgrade from.

While doing all this with me, somehow he still manages to work on projects of his own.  He put in a window this weekend, finished painting the house, painted the front fence, tended the vinyard, cleaned the pool, bought lighting for the pool area, shopped for groceries, helped a friend move, chatted with the next-door neighbor (doesn’t sound like much, but it will suck two hours out of a day and you won’t even notice!), and still had time to…

Prime and paint the garage, lay down a plastic dust barrier, repair two paint sprayers, brush-paint about a thrid of the walls (the first night, when we all got too frustrated with the sprayers), help with the design of the power and lighting, BUY all the materials for the floor, lighting, wiring, and painting.

They say the President of the United States is the busiest person on the planet.  I think they are wrong, maybe the job of being the President is officially the busiest job, but S has to be the busiest person.  I’ve never met anyone who does as much as he does.  It borders on unbelievable.

Moving on.

Insult of the week: “You are not pretty enough to get away with being that stupid.”

This coming week should be much less of a frenetic race of stress and long hours.  I’ll miss the overtime pay but not the lack of… everything but work.

It should be obvious that I’m tired and I’ve lost my mental stabilizers for the night.  Horray for a job well done, even if it took all weekend instead of Friday afternoon.

*HUGS*

Today is a busy day, and I plan to collapse exhausted at the end of it, so I’m doing a morning blog.

• Finish preparing the barn for car work
• Drop the engine
• Drop the transmission
• Replace the transmission bushings
• Replace the clutch
• Find a way to prevent the cowl from rubbing on the blower
• Re-install the engine

And I have tomorrow as an overflow if all that doesn’t happen today, but I’d prefer to be driving tomorrow.

*HUGS*

Update

---

Well, item 1 was totally underestimated.  I’m a little sad because I most likely will not be able to complete the engine/clutch/transmission project this weekend because the garage took almost all day to get ready.  But on the other hand, it’s not just an emptied barn anymore, it’s painted and will have good lighting and floor and bug intrusion protection and power and will allow me to actually do some of the car work wuring the week, with the sun setting just about at the same time as my commute home ends.

Sleepy time.

*HUGS*